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19 May 2017

I wrote a shorter version of this
in August 2007. This version goes into more details, about his legal
troubles, his patients etc.

John Brown was born in 1922, the son of a Mormon physician. He grew up in
Arizona and Utah. He was drafted in the Second World War, and, excelling on the
General Classification Test, was sent by the army to medical school. He
graduated from the University
Of Utah School Of Medicine in August 1947. His first wife ran off with his
best friend; his second died of cancer. After twenty years as a general
practitioner, he took a program in plastic surgery at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian
Hospital, passed the written exam easily, but failed the oral.

From 1966-8 almost all transgender surgery in the US was done in university
gender identity clinics. Georg
Burou’s penile inversion technique that he pioneered in Casablanca was
becoming better known, and in 1968 Stanley
Biber, a doctor-surgeon at the Mount San Rafael hospital in Trinidad, a
mining town in Colorado, who had had extensive surgical experience with the US
Army during the Korean War, started doing vaginoplasties, using diagrams that he
had obtained from Johns Hopkins Hospital based on Dr Burou’s technique.

February 2-4, 1973, saw the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender
Dysphoria Syndrome sponsored by the Divisions of Urology and Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine. Its principal
architect and chairman was Donald R. Laub, M.D., Chief
of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. A highlight was the
presentation of his techniques by Dr Georges Burou; John Brown also made a
presentation, that was well received, doctors at that time not being aware of
the idiosyncrasies of his practice. Vern
Bullough: “the case of John Brown, who Zelda
Suplee, my wife Bonnie, and myself at least halfway encouraged to do
transsexual surgery, a recommendation we quickly regretted”.

John Brown set up business as a doctor-surgeon in San Francisco. His
assistant was James Spence who had a criminal record but no medical training.
Julie approached Brown and Spence about breast implants, and they,
assuring her that she would be a ‘perfect woman’, talked her into a full
operation. This was one of Brown’s first vaginoplasties; he was assisted by
Spence. However unlike Dr Biber, Brown did not have surgical experience and he
did not have operating room privileges. However he did network with trans
activists.

Another trans woman, Wendy Davidson, who was attempting to organize peer
clinics run by transsexuals, also worked with Brown for a while, as did Donna
Colvin. Colvin later reported that he shot up valium before surgery, performed
on kitchen tables and in hotel rooms. Brown also met with Angela
Douglas, who later explained: “‘He wanted to help aid me and came up with
several thousand dollars cash to help publish Mirage Magazine. In
exchange, I promoted him considerably’.

In October Brown’s work was mentioned sarcastically in Herb Caen’s column in the
San Francisco Chronicle. Journalist Paul Ciotti followed up and was
invited to a dinner party where a pitch was made by James Spence to a group of
urologists, proctologists and internists. Spence was hoping to establish what he
projected to be the finest sex-change facility anywhere in the US. Dinner was
served by several transsexuals, who were awaiting surgery. When asked how
candidates would be selected for surgery, Spence replied: “It takes one to know
one. We let other transsexuals make the decision. They can tell best when
someone is a true transsexual — a woman trapped in a man’s body." His surgical
method centered on using the glans penis to form a clitoris, and lining the
vagina with scrotal skin. Ciotti says of Brown: “he came across as genial,
knowledgeable and obviously quite proud of his technique. There was a certain
naiveté (and even passivity) about him that struck me as surprising in a
surgeon”.

However by January 1974 Brown and Spence were at odds.

In 1977 Brown performed vaginoplasty on Angela Douglas who paid around $600.
She described him as one who "fed, housed, paid and helped hundreds, and gave
free or nearly free surgery to at least two hundred of us". Another patient that
year was Nicole Spray.

Later that year, the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance revoked
Brown’s medical license for "gross negligence, incompetence and practicing
unprofessional medicine in a manner which involved moral turpitude". This was
partly based on his practice of doing vaginoplasty on an out-patient basis, not
in a properly equipped surgical theater, and having patients work as medical
assistants as part of their barter for their own surgery. He also misrepresented
transgender surgery on insurance forms as "the congenital absence of a vagina".
Despite this, the judge also filed a memorandum opinion that Brown was a
pioneer making innovative contributions in transsexual surgery: perhaps a better
resolution would be to include Brown in a medically recognized organization,
with others selecting the patients and providing post-operative care.

In 1979 Julie sued, saying that the operation had left her neither
male nor female. She sued for $7 million, but settled out-of-court for
significantly less, but “enough for psychiatric care help for the rest of
Julie’s life and a new operation”. Brown’s lawyer made the offer after
psychiatrist Kathleen Unger testified that the patient would be a mental cripple
for the rest of her life.

Brown worked and successively lost permission to
practice in Hawaii, Alaska and St Lucia. In 1981, in St Lucia, he, then 59,
contracted an arranged marriage to a 17-year-old, who did not speak English. He
taught her the language, and they had two sons.

He then returned to southern California and began an underground practice
operating in Tijuana. Tijuana was already a known destination for transsexual
surgery. The most eminent surgeon was Jose Jesus Barbosa who worked with Harry
Benjamin, and who was the surgeon for Canary
Conn and Lynn
Conway.

Most of Brown’s patients were trans women who could not afford Dr Biber or Dr
Barbosa, or did not meet the requirements re time on hormones, psychiatrist’s
referral etc. One patient at this time was Monique Allen, who had vaginoplasty
at age 22, and came to Brown for enhancements. She would continue with various
other doctors, and eventually had over 200 plastic surgeries.

Patrice Baxter, a cis woman, also had a surgery business in Tijuana. She met
Brown, and became a long-time friend and business partner. She also went to
Brown for a tummy-tuck, a face-lift and breast implants. Several of her friends
and relatives were also operated on: her granddaughter had her ears fixed so
that they did not stick out. Brown used Baxter’s home in Mexico for patient
postoperative care. By this time he was charging $2,500 for a vaginoplasty –
although many of his patients never paid. Baxter was quoted by Ciotti: “"He was
brilliant, but he had no common sense. He would walk through plate-glass doors.
He couldn’t balance his checkbook." Sometimes in the middle of a conversation
he’d just pick up a magazine and begin to read. His bedside manner was no great
shakes, either. "He tended to mumble. He didn’t hold your hand." But so what?
She asks. "He wasn’t a general practitioner," he was a surgeon.

In 1985 a then-19-year-old had surgery that was so successful that her
husband never guessed her past. She later became a manager for an airline. Ann,
a traumatized Cambodian who had fled the Khmer Rouge was also pleased with her
surgery and became a stripper in Las Vegas’ Chinatown.

On the other hand it was estimated that at least 70 of Brown’s transgender
patients ended up with permanent colostomies. UC San Diego plastic-surgery
professor Jack Fisher repaired 15 or so of Brown’s disasters: “"He’s a terrible,
appalling technical surgeon. There’s just no other way to describe it. He
doesn’t know how to make a straight incision. He doesn’t know how to hold a
knife. He has no regard for limiting blood loss."

Brown started offering
penis enlargements – he did this by cutting the suspensor ligament holding the
penis root to the pubic bone. He ran advertisements in The Advocate, and
in 1984 he held a seminar in San Francisco – entrance fee $25 per person. He was
arrested for medical fraud. However it took four years to come to trial.

Meanwhile, in 1986 Penthouse Forum featured this as a cover story "The
Incredible Dick Doctor”. The article portrayed Brown as an inattentive driver
who backed into other cars, and whose trousers fell down in the operating room.
The television news magazine Inside Edition followed up with an investigative story on The Worst Doctor in America. Brown actually co-operated with the film crew.

Brown pleaded no contest to the fraud charges in 1989, was fined $1,000 and
sentenced to four months in jail, but served only 30 days.

In transsexual circles Brown came to be known as 'Butcher Brown', but
patients still came.

After the broadcast of the Inside Edition program,
the San Diego District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation that led to
Brown’s conviction in 1990, and a sentence of three years for practicing
medicine without a license. Several trans woman, ex-patients, showed up to
express support for previous work. His wife, the one from St Lucia, now divorced
him, although they remained on good terms. He served 19 months.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.